The Maintaining and Building of Jan the WJ

WJCO

Meme King
I've had some trouble with Jan having a inconsistent idle while in park/neutral so I took a look at the throttle botty and found that the IAC module was pretty dirty. I cleaned it up with some TB cleaner (and the throttle body while I had it open) and she's got a perfect idle now! Gotta love an easy fix.
Here's the IAC before cleaning, pretty gunked up:
View attachment 257785
I didn't get an after, but you can always Google WJ IAC if you want to see what it is supposed to look like (metalic and shiny).

I've done that as well on mine. Does the trick.
 

Stotch

Caught the Bug

Stotch

Caught the Bug
Ok, I've been having some continuing power problems. If she sits for more than a few days the battery is dead as a door nail. If driven regularly there's no issues. The alternator charges between 13.5 and 13.7 volts at idle. The battery is fairly new (purchased 10/2016) and charges and tests fine as far as I can tell. The only lead I have is the battery terminals. I have avoided changing them until now since I'll have to cut the cables to do so and they don't have much slack in them as it is, but I guess I'll be doing it regardless. Here's one of the terminals now (the other is in similar poor condition):
terminal1.jpg
terminal2.jpg
I will update soon with the new terminals...
 

Stotch

Caught the Bug
Alright, the battery terminals I picked up from the auto parts store are in. Here's the run down:
battTerm.jpg
I couldn't find good ring terminals in a 6-8 guage (which I think is what the WJs cables are) only a 2 guage, so I connected both wires for each terminal to one 2 gauge each. It worked out pretty well. Which was good because I didn't have much cable to play around with.
battTerm2.jpg
They were each crimped on first and then filled in from the back with solder using a small butane torch. I'm glad I bought extra because I screwed up the crimp on the negative and had to redo it.
battTerm3.jpg
Ring terminals done, moving on to the easy part; bolting on the battery post terminals.
battTerm4.jpg
battTerm5.jpg
battTerm6.jpg
All done! (I almost left those vice grips in there :eek:)
battTerm7.jpg
 

WJCO

Meme King
Looks good. I had a voltage drop on mine as well. Ended up being high resistance in the end of the positive cable. Hope that fixes yours.
 

Stotch

Caught the Bug
Looks good. I had a voltage drop on mine as well. Ended up being high resistance in the end of the positive cable. Hope that fixes yours.

Thanks, me too. I can already tell it starts up better, hopefully that was it. Otherwise I'm going to have to go through every fuse one-by-one to find the amperage leak :grayno: :crazyeyes:
 

Stotch

Caught the Bug
The last of Jan's new goodies are on the FedEx truck! They had to break it all into multiple shipments and it's been trickling in over the past month so I don't have tracking info :mad: Hopefully I'll get to start the work this weekend; if not then it should be next week.

Also, it looks like the new battery terminals fixed my voltage problems whoop whoop!
 

WJCO

Meme King
The last of Jan's new goodies are on the FedEx truck! They had to break it all into multiple shipments and it's been trickling in over the past month so I don't have tracking info :mad: Hopefully I'll get to start the work this weekend; if not then it should be next week.

Also, it looks like the new battery terminals fixed my voltage problems whoop whoop!

Glad the voltage drop is fixed. What other stuff are you working on?
 

Stotch

Caught the Bug
So I went ahead and started, but I got a nasty surprise. I haven't worked on WJs much, but I'm pretty sure the spring perch shouldn't look like this: IMG_20170727_192238.jpg
Or this:
IMG_20170727_192139.jpg
Not really sure what to do at this point...
 

WJCO

Meme King
So I went ahead and started, but I got a nasty surprise. I haven't worked on WJs much, but I'm pretty sure the spring perch shouldn't look like this: View attachment 270203
Or this:

Not really sure what to do at this point...

Not normal, but sadly it's common. Clayton is the only company that makes a rebuild kit that I know of, I'll try to find you a link.

https://www.claytonoffroad.com/jeep_grand_cherokee_coil_mount_repair_kit_1999_2004_wj

300 bucks. May be better to diy it if you can weld. He'll you may be able to get a used axle for that.
 
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Stotch

Caught the Bug
Not normal, but sadly it's common. Clayton is the only company that makes a rebuild kit that I know of, I'll try to find you a link.

https://www.claytonoffroad.com/jeep_grand_cherokee_coil_mount_repair_kit_1999_2004_wj

300 bucks. May be better to diy it if you can weld. He'll you may be able to get a used axle for that.

Thanks, I'll probably see if I can work something out to fix this one. Maybe some 0.25 steel and capped pipe to get something like this:
springPerch.jpg
Then I'll have to borrow a welder or finally spring for one for my garage. I can't even count how many times I wished I had one...
 

WJCO

Meme King
Thanks, I'll probably see if I can work something out to fix this one. Maybe some 0.25 steel and capped pipe to get something like this:

Then I'll have to borrow a welder or finally spring for one for my garage. I can't even count how many times I wished I had one...

That should work. I know guys have repaired them before.
 

hinrichs

Caught the Bug
Oh wow that sucks on the spring plates. I think your idea with the capped pipe would work well and be fairly easy to do.
 

GraniteCrystal

New member
Wow. That's nuts. I wonder why that rusted so bad? Water should run off it...or maybe it rusts from the inside out. Hope you can find a cheap way to replace. Sounds like goods excuse for a welder.
 
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